Mr. Speaker, Canadians should and do know that on the eve of the election this government is creating last minute jobs. Unfortunately for Canadians, these jobs are in appointments to the Senate, the Immigration and Refugee Board, agricultural boards, the IDRC, the National Research Council, the Cape Breton Development Corporation and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. You name it, if there is a commission the government has appointed somebody to it.

Meanwhile 1.4 million Canadians are out on the street looking for work with the highest level of unemployment since the 1930s.

When will the Prime Minister drop the Liberal agenda and come down to the people's agenda of jobs for ordinary Canadians, not just highly placed Liberal pals?

Mr. Speaker, the Reform Party is publicly decrying the government for making investments in very important job creation issues. However, just before question period the member for Edmonton Southwest slipped me a note asking if he could get a $40,000 government grant for someone in his constituency.

Mr. Speaker, I will let the member from Edmonton deal with this issue of funding for a centre for the handicapped. She can deal with that herself. It is interesting; once a rat packer, always a rat packer.

Day after day the papers are revealing more about the avalanche of pre-election goodies being poured out by Liberals for Liberals but they are being paid for by the taxpayers. The taxpayers would like to know the cost of these new measures.

People are interested in the new armoury which the Prime Minister announced last week for his riding. But he has neglected to tell us exactly how much it will cost or how many votes he expects to get for it.

What is the total amount the Liberal government is spending in the Prime Minister's riding just before the election? How much pork is enough pork?

Douglas YoungMinister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the hon. member's question concerning the armoury in Shawinigan, it is obvious he has not paid much attention to how that project has been set up.

The announcement we made last week with respect to that armoury calls for a private-public partnership where the armoury would be built as a facility for the reserves, for the militia. It would also be privately owned. It could serve for many other purposes. It

could be part of a larger complex. It could be an existing building or a new building.

The hon. member should look more closely at exactly what the government has proposed. He should understand that we are moving to meet what I thought his party supported. When I made the report to the government with respect to the future of the Canadian forces we said we were moving the reserves and the militia from 20,000 or 22,000 to about 30,000. Is the hon. member against the increase in the number of people who are going to be functioning in the Canadian forces as part of the militia and the reserves or is he not?

The federalist propaganda is spreading throughout the federal government. The Department of Foreign Affairs is taking part in this despicable process by tying financial support for Quebec artists performing abroad to the promotion of national unity.

Will the heritage minister do like Quebec's Minister of Culture and Communications and call to order her colleague from foreign affairs? Will she tell him to stop using this unacceptable criterion and to provide support to artists strictly on the basis of the artistic merit of their projects?

Mr. Speaker, I made it clear to the Quebec Minister of Culture that the government does not make political decisions regarding artistic issues.

I find it confusing that the same people who accuse us of interfering with cultural decisions asked us last week to overrule a decision made by Telefilm. If we follow the principle of non interference, then we have to do it consistently, including the fact that Telefilm made its decision on the basis of artistic criteria, which has nothing to do with politics.

Mr. Speaker, it is truly regrettable that the heritage minister does not know the artistic stature of Mr. Falardeau, whose project was turned down because it dealt with the Patriotes of 1837 and because Mr. Falardeau is a committed sovereignist.

It comes as no surprise that the heritage minister would endorse the politicization of the Department of Foreign Affairs' grants process.

My question to the heritage minister is: Why does her Liberal government refuse to recognize and respect Quebec's culture, and why is it in fact incapable of doing so?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member claims that the decision is based on politics, when in fact we said clearly that any decision made by Telefilm to give a grant for any project should be made independently. Now, the separatists are asking us to interfere.

If they want us to respect the cultural institutions' autonomy, as we do, then they should not ask us to overrule a decision which was made strictly on the basis of artistic criteria, not political ones.

Mr. Speaker, you see, it is election time again and enumeration has taken place in my riding, in particular at Matsqui prison.

A judge said prisoners should have the right to vote because "preventing prisoners serving more than two years from voting is too sweeping an infringement". This government must be really hard up for votes these days.

Why did the justice minister not ask for a stay of the judge's decision until the appeal was decided on so that prisoners would be unable to vote in this election?